2013-08-17
Shaenon: A huge thanks to our new colorist, Pancha Diaz. Awesome work, Pancha.
Channing: I am officially nervoucited.
Skin Horse
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Shaenon: A huge thanks to our new colorist, Pancha Diaz. Awesome work, Pancha.
Channing: I am officially nervoucited.
Discussion (95) ¬
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Holy Technicolor(tm) crap, the rabbit hole goes all the way to the Emerald City…. interesting times indeed.
No kidding!
HOLY BLEEP!ing BLEEP!crackers!
That was some VERY good LSD!
mnem
Because everything looks more real in black & white…
AND BEST OF ALL – Announcing a colorist implies ALOT more color in the strip. This may really be the Wizard Of Oz/Girl Genius treatment.
SO AWESOME.
Holy shit, this is fantastic! A pivotal turning point, indeed! But then, is there any other kind of pivotal points?
Well, there’s the “partly snapped in half” kind, like when you get a ship to fall out of the sky onto the edge of a cliff and it goes “SKREEEAAAAAAAAAAEH” and the half that’s sticking over the edge kinda pivots around the breaking point in what’s left of the keel and other longitudinal structural stuff and breaks off and goes ‘splooey. Unless you drop it from too high up or miss the edge in which case the whole thing goes ‘splooey instead.
I don’t think this is that kind of pivotal point, though.
Now in technicolor.
It’s like opening the door & finding a world filled with munchkins.
I was thinking Eddie Valiant entering Toontown.
SMIIILE, DARN YA, SMIIIILE!
Oh man, it’s like Dave with the suddenly transparent glasses! Please tell me this doesn’t mean the comic is almost over!
Unlikely, especially with someone being added to the creative team. Most probably this is where they, and we, begin to get an inkling of what’s _really_ going on.
Suddenly transparent glasses?
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive&chapter=52217#strip6
Not even close!
I’m reminded of the perception-expanding scenes in Keychain of Creation (AAAH LIMBS!)
I was just thinking that.
http://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0319.html
The Kansas line is dead on, too.
Whoa.
“We have met the enemy and he is us. And oh man, are we ever screwed.”
Holy cripes was that a cool touch. Bravo, Team Skin Horse.
Yeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssss!
Also disappoint the unicorn is not pink. But oh well.
Hit him with crowbar.
He will become purple and azure.
With polka-dots.
No, in this context, pink is reserved for the Pig of Cuteness.
And Nick’s dress; it’s Sparkly-Rosepetal-Dawnblush-Of-Innocence Pink.
Holy SHIT COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR!
Mind = BLOWN
Does anyone else smell something burning? :p
Honestly, Mistycorn, this is our biggest family photo in like fifteen years, in color yet — you know how much it costs to develop color slides — but you couldn’t put down that infernal toy of yours for ten seconds? Is this really how you want your grandchildren to remember you?
Hooray!!!!
Wait, is unity actually looking at her hands… cna she see the color?? are they aware tehy were in black and white??
No, she is holding an Apple, the symbol of lost innocence. As in they are no longer innocently muddling about in paradise and must now deal with the real world. I think she is looking at it.
Panel 2 is amazing! Nice work, guys!
Wooo! It looks like Unity’s just noticed her apple is red.
…well, I guess it was red before. But now it’s *really* red.
Am I the only one seeing a reference to The Giver here?
Hah! I saw it too, but didn’t comment because I had to leave.
I think she’s actually looking at the critters like everybody else, but I do love the symbolism (intended or unintended) of the apple, in the tasting-the-fruit-of-the-tree-of-knowledge-of-good-and-evil (howcome it took a good little neopagan like myself to mention this?) and the thing about apples and fairy tales (don’t let Nick bite it! Bet he snores.) And oh, the COLOR! Can’t wait to see Marcie in color; she has GOT to be a redhead or at least a strawberry blonde!
I think she’s been shown as a redhead in the Sunday features.
Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my.
Panel 2 is amazing, but my favorite part is how the addition of color showcases all the different skin tones that make up Unity.
Congrats on the color upgrade team!
What I want to know is how long you’ve had your colorist and have been sitting on her (him? I’m not familiar enough with panchas to be certain of gender here) while you waited for an in story excuse to bring this in.
My God, that pig is wearing a vile suit. Purple and green checks? Put him back in his judge’s robes, quick!
Hey, that’s the only suit he has which isn’t pre-1970s…
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT SUIT.
Is it just me, or is even Unity’s apple surprised by this. It certainly seems to be saying ‘!’ In the last panel.
We wish to welcome you to Munchkinla . . . wait, is Baron Mistycorn holding a PSVita? My suspension of disbelief has been shattered. No one bought a Vita.
Wow. Just awesome. I just hope this doesn’t turn into a M/W/F comic now. that always seems to happen when they go color. Even so, it’ll be worth it.
I’ve been imagining Tip as a redhead for years. I know there’s a lot of bonus content that proves otherwise but I like redheads. I guess I can’t do that anymore.
I thought it was mentioned a couple times before about his being blonde…. I’d go archive crawling, but this sight loads too slowly for me.
(TUNE: “Merry Old Land Of Oz”, Arlen & Harburg)
Holy cow!
See them now!
Characters out in force!
We see tonight, not black and white,
But the colors of Team Skin Horse!
Pink and blue,
Yellow too,
And a smidgen of green, of course …
This Whimsy home is polychrome,
Like the members of Team Skin Horse!
We would gladly kiss the feet of Miss Diaz!
’Cause she gives us chills with all the skills she has!
All o’ that jazz!
Readers here,
We all cheer!
Changes, we all endorse!
For color strip, we all say “Hip
Hip Hooray for our Team Skin Horse!”
Ed, you compel me to say, “Now that’s a Skin Horse of a different color!”
Don’t know how much of an Ozite you are, but you slipped in an extra Oz reference when you mentioned polychrome, and that’s awesome.
So, is it significant that one of them is eating the fruit of the tree if knowledge here? The one that got Adam and Eve kicked out of the garden of Eden? Just say’n…
Actually, there is NO evidence in Genesis to suggest that was an apple. All it ever says is “fruit”. (Not that this has a great deal of bearing on comic strip symbolism, since an apple is the only specific fruit we’d recognize as such and she has to draw SOMETHING. I, likewise, am just saying.)
In some cultures/contexts, “Apple” is used generically for “fruit”.
Many scholars suggest the fruit was a fig. After all, if you suddenly find yourself aware of your nakedness, you’d cover yourself with a leaf from the closest tree at hand… in their case, the they you took the fruit from.
Of course, the real problem wasn’t the apple in the tree,
but the pair on the ground.
I like to think the apple means Unity wasn’t about to waste a perfectly good fruit just because it was steeped in thorazine.
Huh, I assumed the apple was a reference to The Giver, where the main character’s first awareness of color is an apple.
Whooooooa.
Amazing how just a slight shift in perspective can make the entire world seem different.
By the way, Dear Authors, my compliments for the immense dramatics from such a simple upgrade.
You know, when I saw yesterday’s comic I was a little underwhelmed. Didn’t they already distrust their circumstance? Their management? Their grasp on inhuman history? That’s why they came!
Then this happened, from a guy who was apparently put down for being able to manipulate the subconscious minds of his viewers. Usually the break from black and white to color would be an experience of revelation, not one of being shackled to some new manipulation, so that implies the film reel somehow took their blinders off.
Dang.
Yow. Also: Two-and-a-half blond(e)s?
You wanted to see how far the rabbit hole goes, my friends.
Welcome to Wonderland.
BshssVwhaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!
Does this mean that Skin Horse just became a little more real?
I think my favorite part is the green squirrel. That’s where my mind is stuck, anyway.
Chipmunk, my bad. The squirrel is brown with a red heart.
I have a feeling it’s going to be tricky remembering to keep Unity’s coloring consistent from panel to panel / episode to episode. But maybe that’s not important, and her body parts or sorta like mix and match coordinates that she can shuffle around…
It looks like Mary and Gussie have already switched outfits, so yeah, it’s more work. I just hope the team can keep up the daily schedule with the extra steps involved.
Unity resews her limbs often so there’s an easy excuse.
“You’re out of the woods, You’re out of the dark, You’re out of the night. Step into the sun, Step into the light. Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place On the Face of the Earth or the sky. Hold onto your breath, Hold onto your heart, Hold onto your hope. March up to the gate and bid it open.”
Well, they ARE from the 60’s….
(Tune: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, John Lennon & Paul McCartney)
Picture yourself in a boat in a tunnel
With animatronics and bright painted skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with sunglasses o’er eyes.
Gerald Giraffe now in orange and brown
Towering over your head.
Look for the girls in the pink and red clothes
Ere they’re gone.
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Ooooohh!
Gussie leads down to a room called Star Chamber
Where red-hearted Squirrel explains what they need.
Cunningham smiles as you show off your pink dress
While wearing his purple/green tweed.
There is Moustach-i-o’s drum on the shelf!
Will you take these things away?
Walk to the back to the film on the wall
And you’re done.
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Ooooohh!
Picture yourself in a room in a theme park,
With 40-some-year-old astonishing news.
Suddenly someone is there through the doorway,
The cast with kaleidoscope hues!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Skin Horse on the Web in Color!
Ooooohh!
gaaaaaaah! .. asp. I meant Gasp
How do you people do that? It’s even stronger here than it was with *chord* Tigerlily Jones!
Wow. Now there’s a great way to handle the transition.
Simply amazing. Bravo.
It’s the radioactive film. Because of it, they can now see color. These things happen, you know. Mad science is tricky like that. One moment, you are irradiating acorns, the next, you’ve acquired a fire breathing squirrel infestation.
Oh, f^ck me sideways. THIS ROCKS!
I don’t think you’ve ever done a story reveal better, and that’s saying a lot.
–Nonie, in awe. And fear and trembling. And squee.
[applause] Brilliantly done, you tw– er, three now, I guess! Brilliantly done! And welcome to Ms. Diaz! [/applause]
It appears from some of the comments, however, that a point of correction may be in order here. Some of you, my fellow readers, appear to be under the impression that the world depicted in Skin Horse has been shown to us in black and white until now and is only just now starting to be shown in color. Au contraire! I put it to you that the world depicted in this comic strip–and in its mad-science-themed predecessor–has always been shown to us in color. But that world has hitherto been a black-and-white world, and has only just turned color today, much like our own world did sometime in the 1930s (albeit less grainily).
Of course, a few of you have remarked that we’ve already seen the occasional panel, book cover, or entire strip rendered in color before now, and you are quite correct. How can this be, if our marvellous (with two l’s for effect) Creative Team has been showing us color drawings of a black-and-white world? Well, it is said that a lot of great artists were insane….
Ah, a fellow Calvin & Hobbes reader, I see.
So is this a big reveal for the Skin Horse team, the Little House crew or both?
I suppose it’s because both of the main groups are present and facing each other, but my gamer instincts are telling me that this is the perfect spot for a mid-game boss fight.
Given the obvious nod to The Wizard of Oz, it’s gotta be the Skin Horse team – they’re Dorothy here, stepping out of a black-and-white world and into a color one. What exactly that means for the story, we’ll have to see – are they seeing these critters in a new light, or what? I dunno…
Curse you, Jeff and Shaenon, you just had to put this on a Saturday, didn’t you!
You….do realize thats not a real word, right Jeff?
It is now.
“Channing: I am officially nervoucited.”
I know right? Its like we’ve traveled through a magic mirror to a land that at once different and yet strangely familiar.
Wow, this strip has received about twice the usual number of comments.
There’s a grey foot behind Mary and Gussie, and I can’t tell what it belongs to.
Looks to me like it’s supposed to be part of the orange squirrel.
Lovely, lovely color, and yes the best part is Unity.
And forgive me if someone has already mentioned this, but Unity has a theme song. Check out the Punch Brothers’ “My Sweet Little Patchwork Girlfriend.” http://youtu.be/J7WmGQ_VemU . Best line “I promised not to mess around with other girls unless they’re her.”
I’ve been catching up, so I just caught this by reading it only about ten minutes ago, but… this is the /other/ apple, right? The one dosed with Thorazine?
I don’t remember if it does, so I hope the dark half of Unity’s face lightens up (not a complete race change, obviously, just less saturated). It makes her expressions a lot more difficult to interpret when one half of her mouth and one of her eyebrows blend into the background colour.
Blond Tip and Blond(e?)-in-pink-dress Nicklet are so cute. The shading on Tip’s neck makes him look extra masculine-hot.
This is going to make it easier to remember that Unity’s blonde hair is yellow, not white.
Wow. All the comments remind me of my mothers reaction to the Oz movie when she took me to see it the first time. While color movies did exist when I was a kid it took me years to figure out that it really would have been the first color movie she ever saw.
When I was a kid (1950s) they would show W/Oz on TV once a year, but my family only owned a B&W set for a long time, so I didn’t see it the color transition till years later. It was an awesome revelation.
[Tune: Over the Rainbow]
Aware, Of the whole rainbow
‘fore our eyes,
Now that we have perceived our,
Whimsy corp. Princess prize.
Aware, of the whole rainbow,
All the hues,
And, aware of the old war,
And all the old war blues.
Today we learned to see in bright,
More colors than just black and white, astounding!
And we learned that our employer,
Might be a rude and evil cur,
Back from its founding!
Aware, of the whole rainbow,
And bad guys,
Our employer is evil,
That was quite a surprise!
If our employer’s evil, poo!
Does that mean,
We, are evil, too?~
BOOOOOO! I liked the black and white!